A Darkness Absolute (Casey Duncan #2)(10)

“Then you two take the snowmobile,” Anders says.

I wave the compass. He gestures at the path. I wave the compass again. He sighs.

“I’m not even going to ask what all that means,” Nicole says.

“Casey is reminding me I can’t find my way out of a shopping mall. I’m pointing out that I have a path to follow. She’s not buying it.”

“If it was a straight line to Rockton…,” I say.

“Yeah, yeah. But I’m not leaving you out here. All three of us can ride. I’ve doubled up with Eric.”

“It’s a matter of space not weight,” I say. “Stop arguing, and get on the damn sled. You’ll be in Rockton within the hour. You can send Kenny back for me.”

Nicole is shivering convulsively. She’s wearing my snowsuit and Anders’s sweater, but she’s having trouble regulating her body temperature, a combination of semistarvation and living in a controlled temperate environment. As soon as she sees us looking, she straightens and says, “I’m fine. Just caught a chill. I can walk.”

Anders looks at me. “You’re taking the backpack and my snowsuit.”

“Bag, yes. But that snowsuit? I’ll be lucky if I don’t face-plant every five paces, tripping over it. I’m fine.”

“Nicki? We’re going to switch suits, okay? Mine probably smells more than Casey’s, but it’s a sexy, manly smell.”

I snort at that, but it gets a glimmer of a smile from Nicole. We find a sheltered spot, and he strips first, and we help her switch as fast as possible. After a few last words, they’re on the sled and roaring to Rockton.

I start walking. It’s five kilometers. I can do that in a couple of hours. I have to laugh at the thought. In the city, if someone told me it’d take me two hours to travel that far, I’d wonder if I had to get on all fours and crawl.

I’m not a runner—muscle damage means I can’t do more than dash from point A to point B. But down south it wasn’t unusual for me to walk this far to work in good weather, and I could clock it in under an hour easily. Walking in a snowy forest is a whole different thing. Which is why humans invented snowshoes, to emulate animals with oversized feet as an adaptation to winter travel. And, yes, that’s another Dalton tidbit, squirreled away in my brain. He’s been taking me snowshoeing, though I’m not sure if it’s more for my education or his amusement.

I’m thinking of the last time we went out, a week ago, heading into the forest with the fixings for a bonfire and—

A twig cracks to my left.

I spin. Even as I do, I’m mentally rolling my eyes. It’s going to take more than four months up here to stifle the city girl in me. I still need to pay attention. But the startle response—hand going to my gun—isn’t required … unless I have a hankering for venison or rabbit.

A wash of gray to the east promises sunshine, but it’s no more than a promise, and I need to shine my flashlight into the forest. I expect to hear more twig snapping as some curious woodland creature beats a hasty retreat.

Instead, I hear silence. An eerie one I’d have noticed earlier if I hadn’t been amusing myself in pleasant-memory land.

Quiet’s not good in a forest.

Um, it’s always quiet in the forest.

I said that once, and Dalton made me stop talking, close my eyes, and identify five sounds, not unlike a drill sergeant making me drop and give him five. It’d been a lesson, too. I easily heard the sounds, even if I needed help identifying them. Quiet isn’t silence. When the forest goes silent …

There’s a predator nearby.

Right. Me.

But even as I reason that, I’m still shining that flashlight, and the hairs on my neck are still up. I’m just a human. Wildlife steers clear, but it doesn’t stop what it’s doing and wait for me to pass.

I consider. Then I take a step in the direction of the noise. I stop. Silence. Another step. Still silence. Another …

The wind whips past in a sudden gust, startling me again, and I get a face full of blowing snow. Then an eerie whine cuts through the trees and another blast of wind hits, driving icy pellets into my face.

That’s why the forest went quiet. A fresh storm blowing up.

I turn back toward the path, mentally calculating how much farther I have to go—

A figure stands ten feet away. Wearing a snowsuit, a dark balaclava, and goggles. The first thing I process is that he’s roughly Dalton’s size. But then he moves, and that movement tells me it’s not Dalton. The balaclava and goggles aren’t something he would wear while combing the woods for me … and it’s exactly what was wrong about that figure on the path yesterday, one reason we’d mistaken it for a bear, our eyes failing to see a human face.

I remember what Nicole said about never seeing her captor’s face. How it’d always been covered.

I raise my gun. The figure dives into the undergrowth. I fire a warning shot, the sound echoing, some creature to my right barreling through the trees in escape.

I’m looking around, both hands on my gun, having dropped the flashlight when I aimed. It’s on the ground behind me, lighting the scene, but a visual sweep shows nothing, and the wind swirls madly now, ice beating my face, stinging my eyes as I struggle to keep them open and—

I sense something behind me. I spin and see a metal bar on a collision course with my skull. I duck, and it glances off my ponytail. There’s a grunt, and the man lunges, metal bar in flight, poised to strike me as soon as I run. I don’t run. I wheel and kick.